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Harry Bosch is assigned a homicide call in South L.A. that takes him to Fortune Liquors, where the Chinese owner has been shot to death behind the counter in a robbery.

Joined by members of the department's Asian Crime Unit, Bosch relentlessly investigates the killing and soon identifies a suspect, a Los Angeles member of a Hong Kong triad. But before Harry can close in, he gets the word that his young daughter Maddie, who lives in Hong Kong with her mother, is missing.

Bosch drops everything to journey across the Pacific to find his daughter. Could her disappearance and the case be connected? With the stakes of the investigation so high and so personal, Bosch is up against the clock in a new city, where nothing is at it seems.

About the Author

A former Los Angeles Times crime reporter, Michael Connelly s familiarity with the seamy side of L.A. adds a steamy kind of street cred to his hardboiled, gritty detective novels -- especially his bestselling series of mysteries featuring dark detective Hieronymous Harry Bosch.

I have read all of Michael Connelly's books and find them full of suspense and difficult to put down. The outcome is often very difficult to guess until the last chapter or two. Wish there were more available.

Another in the Harry Bosch series that manages to maintain the suspense from Harry's LA base all the way to an unfamiliar Hong Kong. What starts off as a seemingly straight forward robbery/homicide quickly turns into one of the most personally involved cases Harry has ever encountered. Michael Connelly has kept to his high standard in The 9 Dragons and has created an excellent novel which will grab your attention all the way to the surprising end.

"If at first encounter Connelly seems primarily an exceptionally accomplished writer of crime novels, at closer examination he is also a mordant and knowing chronicler of the world in which crime takes place, i.e., our world."--Washington Post

ONE

From across the aisle Harry Bosch looked into his partner's cubicle and watched him conduct his daily ritual of straightening the corners on his stacks of files, clearing the paperwork from the center of his desk and finally placing his rinsed out coffee cup in a desk drawer. Bosch checked his watch and saw it was only three-forty. It seemed that each day, Ignacio Ferras began the ritual a minute or two earlier than the day before. It was only Tuesday, the day after Labor Day weekend and the start of a short week, and already he was edging toward the early exit. This routine was always prompted by a phone call from home. There was a wife waiting there with a with a toddler and a brand new set of twins. She watched the clock like the owner of a candy store watches the fat kids. She needed the break and she needed her husband home to deliver it. Even across the aisle from his partner, and with the four foot sound walls separating workspaces in the new squad room, Bosch could usually hear both sides of the call. It always began with; "When are you coming home?"

Everything in final order at his workstation, Ferras looked over at Bosch.

"Harry, I'm going to take off," he said. "Beat some of the traffic. I have a lot of calls out but they have my cell. No need waiting around for that."

Ferras had rubbed his left shoulder as he spoke. This was also part of the routine. It was his unspoken way of reminding Bosch that he had taken a bullet a couple years before and had earned the early exit.

Bosch just nodded. The issue wasn't really about whether his partner left the job early or what he had earned. It was about his commitment to the mission of homicide work and whether it would be there when they finally got the next call out. Ferras had gone through nine months of physical therapy and rehab before reporting back to the squad room. But in the year since, he had worked cases with a reluctance that was wearing Bosch thin. He wasn't committed and Bosch was tired of waiting on him.

He was also tired of waiting for a fresh kill. It had been four weeks since they'd drawn a case and they were well into the late summer heat. As certain as the Santa Ana winds blowing down out of the mountain passes, Bosch knew a fresh kill was coming.

Ferras stood up and locked his desk. He was taking his jacket off the back of the chair when Bosch saw Larry Gandle step out of his office on the far side of the squad room and head toward them. As the senior man in the partnership, Bosch had been given the first choice of cubicles a month earlier when Robbery-Homicide Division moved over from the decrepit Parker Center to the new Police Administration Building. Most detective threes took the cubicles facing the windows that looked out on City Hall. Bosch had chosen the opposite. He had given his partner the view and took the cube that let him watch what was happening in the squad room. Now he saw the approaching lieutenant and he instinctively knew that his partner wasn't going home early.

Gandle was holding a piece of paper torn from a notepad and had an extra hop in his step. That told Bosch the wait was over. The call out was here. The fresh kill. Bosch started to rise.

"Bosch and Ferras, you're up," Gandle said when he got to them. "Need you to take a case for South Bureau."

Bosch saw his partner's shoulders slump. He ignored it and reached out for the paper Gandle was holding. He looked at the address written on it. South Normandie. He'd been there before.

"It's a liquor store," Gandle said. "One man down behind the counter, patrol is holding a witness. That's all I got. You two good to go?"

"We're good," Bosch said before his partner could complain.

But that didn't work.

"Lieutenant, this is Homicide Special," Ferras said, turning and pointing to the boar's head mounted over the squad room door. "Why are we taking a rob job at a liquor store? You know it was a banger and the South guys could wrap it up – or at least put a name on the shooter – before midnight."

Ferras had a point. Homicide Special was for the difficult and complex cases. It was an elite squad that went after the tough cases with the relentless skill of a boar rooting in the mud for a truffle. A liquor store holdup in gang territory hardly qualified.

Gandle, whose balding pate and dour expression made him a perfect administrator, spread his hands in a gesture offering a complete lack of sympathy.

"I told everybody in the staff meeting last week. We've got South's back this week. They've got a skeleton crew on while everybody else is in homicide school until the fourteenth. They caught three cases over the weekend and one this morning. So there goes the skeleton crew. You guys are up and the rob job is yours. That's it. Any other questions? Patrol is waiting down there with a witness."

"We're good, Boss," Bosch said, ending the discussion.

"I'll wait to hear from you then."

Gandle headed back to his office. Bosch pulled his coat off the back of his chair, put it on and then opened the middle drawer of his desk. He took the leather notebook out of his back pocket and replaced the pad of lined paper in it with a new one. A fresh kill always got a fresh pad. That was his routine. He looked at the detective shield embossed on the notebook flap and then returned it to his back pocket. The truth was he didn't care what kind of case it was. He just wanted a case. It was like anything else. You fall out of practice and you lose your edge. Bosch didn't want that.

Ferras stood with his hands on his hips, looking up at the clock on the wall over the bulletin boards.

"Shit," Ferras said. "Every time."

"What do you mean, 'every time'?" Bosch said. "We haven't caught a case in a month."

"Yeah, well, I was getting used to that."

"Well, if you don't want to work murders, there's always a nine to five table like auto theft."

"Yeah, right."

"Then let's go."

Bosch stepped out of the cubicle into the aisle and headed toward the door. Ferras followed, pulling his phone out so he could call his wife and give her the bad news. On the way out of the squad room, both men reached up and patted the boar on its flat nose for good luck.

TWO

Bosch didn't need to lecture Ferras on the way to South L.A. His driving in silence was his lecture. His young partner seemed to wither under the pressure of what was not said and finally opened up.

"This is driving me crazy," he said.

"What is?" Bosch asked.

"The twins. There's so much work, so much crying. It's a domino effect. One wakes up and that starts the other one up. Neither of us is getting any sleep and my wife is . . ."

"What?"

"I don't know, going crazy. Calling me all the time, asking when I'm coming home. So I come home and then it's my turn and I get the boys and I get no break. It's work, kids, work, kids, work, kids every day."

"What about a nanny?"

"We can't afford a nanny. Not with the way things are, and we don't even get overtime anymore."

Bosch didn't know what to say. His daughter Madeline was a month past her thirteenth birthday and almost ten thousand miles away from him. He had never been directly involved in raising her. He saw her four weeks a year – two in Hong Kong and two in L.A. – and that was it. What advice could he legitimately give a full-time dad with three kids, including twins?

"Look, I don't know what to tell you," he said. "You know I've got your back. I'll do what I can when I can. But – "

"I know, Harry. I appreciate that. It's just the first year with the twins, you know? 'Sposed to get a lot easier when they get a little older."

"Yeah, but what I'm trying to say here is that maybe it's more than just the twins. Maybe it's you, Ignacio."

"Me? What are you saying?"

"I'm saying maybe it's you. Maybe you came back too soon, you ever think about that?"

Ferras did a slow burn and didn't respond.

"Hey, it happens sometimes," Bosch said. "You take a bullet and you start thinking that lightning might strike twice."

"Look, Harry, I don't know what kind of bullshit that is, but I'm fine that way. I'm good. This is about sleep deprivation and being fucking exhausted all the time and not being able to catch up because my wife is riding my ass from the moment I get home, okay?"

"Whatever you say, partner."

"That's right, partner. Whatever I say. Believe me, I get it enough from her. I don't need it from you, too."

Bosch nodded and that was enough said. He knew when to quit.

The address Gandle gave them was in the seventieth block of South Normandie Avenue. This was just a few blocks from the infamous corner of Florence and Normandie where some of the most horrible images of the 1992 riots had been captured by news helicopters and broadcast around the world. It seemed to be the lasting image of Los Angeles to many.

But Bosch quickly realized he knew the area and the liquor store that was their destination from a different riot and for a different reason.

Fortune Liquors was already cordoned off by yellow crime scene tape. A small number of onlookers were gathered but murder in this neighborhood was not that much of a curiosity. The people here had seen it before – many times. Bosch pulled their sedan into the middle of a grouping of three patrol cars and parked. After going to the trunk to retrieve his briefcase, he locked the car up and headed toward the tape.

Bosch and Ferras gave their names and serial numbers to a patrol officer with the crime scene attendance log and then ducked under the tape. As they approached the front door of the store, Bosch put his hand into his right jacket pocket and pulled out a book of matches. It was old and worn. The front cover said Fortune Liquors and it carried the address of the small yellow building before them. He thumbed the book open. There was only one match missing, and on the inside cover was the fortune that came with every matchbook:

Happy Is The Man Who

Finds Refuge In Himself

Bosch had carried the matchbook with him for almost twelve years. Not so much for the fortune, though he did believe in what it said. It was because of the missing match and what it reminded him of.

"Harry, what's up?" Ferras asked.

Bosch realized he had paused in his approach to the store.

"Nothing, I've just been here before."

"When? On a case?"

"Sort of. But it was a long time ago. Let's go in."

Bosch walked past his partner and entered the open front door of the liquor store.

Michael Connelly decided to become a writer after discovering the books of Raymond Chandler while attending the University of Florida. Once he decided on this direction he chose a major in journalism and a minor in creative writing — a curriculum in which one of his teachers was novelist Harry Crews.

After graduating in 1980, Connelly worked at newspapers in Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, primarily specializing in the crime beat. In Fort Lauderdale he wrote about police and crime during the height of the murder and violence wave that rolled over South Florida during the so-called cocaine wars. In 1986, he and two other reporters spent several months interviewing survivors of a major airline crash. They wrote a magazine story on the crash and the survivors which was later short-listed for the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. The magazine story also moved Connelly into the upper levels of journalism, landing him a job as a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times, one of the largest papers in the country, and bringing him to the city of which his literary hero, Chandler, had written.

After three years on the crime beat in L.A., Connelly began writing his first novel to feature LAPD Detective Hieronymus Bosch. The novel, The Black Echo, based in part on a true crime that had occurred in Los Angeles, was published in 1992 and won the Edgar Award for Best First Novel by the Mystery Writers of America. Connelly has followed that up with 18 more novels.
Connelly's books have been translated in 35 languages and have won the Edgar Award, Anthony Award, Macavity Award, Los Angeles Times Best Mystery/Thriller Award, Shamus Award, Dilys Award, Nero Award, Barry Award, Audie Award, Ridley Award, Maltese Falcon Award (Japan), .38 Caliber Award (France), Grand Prix Award (France), and Premio Bancarella Award (Italy).

Michael was the President of the Mystery Writers of America organization in 2003 and 2004. In addition to his literary work, Michael was one of the creators, writers, and consulting producers of Level 9, a TV show about a task force fighting cyber crime, that ran on UPN in the Fall of 2000.
Michael lives with his family in Florida.